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Cheers Hairy, 2nd time I've used hops and i'm only three beers down. I was planning on keeping this one simple by doing it the following way

Tip the 1kg Dex/DME into FV

Boil 2 ltrs water toss it in over sugars and swirl the FV

Add the draught and galaxy to FV and swirl

top up to 23ltrs

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i have found the best thing with DME is to mix it with cold water, cos with hot water it clumps.

Two ways work...

1. Put it in a sanitised bowl and stir some water in with a sanitised whisk; or

2. Put the DME in the FV, as some cold water and swirl and mix with spoon, then add some hot before you add the dex or it will clump in the cold water (learnt that last night).

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I've brewed a lot of ales with Cooper's OS cans,plain DME,& hops. I boil 2.5-3 gallons of water,then add half a 3lb bag of the plain DME & stir till dissolved.Then do hop additions (on average batches) @ 20 minutes left in the boil. Put no more than 1oz of hop pellets in a muslin hop sack to allow expansion room. At flame out,remove hop sack & squeeze that good juice out.

Then add remaining DME & the cooper's can (seperately),stiring till dissolved. Cover brew kettle & steep for 15 minutes to pasteurise,which happens about 162F. Then chill in ice bath down to 70F.

I pour the chilled wort & top off water through a fine mesh strainer to get some trub out & aerate it as well. I then stir roughly for 5 minutes straight to mix water & wort well. And aerate it all a bit more. Take hydrometer sample & pitch re-hydrated yeast. Re-hydrating yeast cuts lag time.

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Am I thinking on the same lines Adam, that if you boil the can contents, as there is some hops and other goodies in some of them you boil away what little there is away. I was initially boiling water then adding the sugars to the boil, boiling for 10 mins adding the can and boiling for 5 more. I found I had more lag time this way as I was boiling away the O2. I found adding the sugars to the FV and then pouring 2ltrs of boiled water on top and swirling the FV then addin the can which has been sitting in boiled water for ten minutes then swirling again, i;m getting very little lag time as the swirling is re oxgenating then pour the cold water over the top from a fair height and as it drops in it adds oxygen. I don't know I guess thats the joy of brewing we all do different things but get great results. I get so much great advise from here. I have the Draught on brewing and its been about 8 hrs and I have foam building. Can't wait to try this one, more so than the others as I've used Galaxy hops in the FV for the first time.

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If you are topping up that boiled water and DME and can with tap water? Thats where you are getting your O2 from... I also used to whisk the crap out of it prior to pitching and sometimes again after a few hours.. if you add a little bit of O2 during the budding stage you will get a cracking ferment.

 

though it's true that boiling a can isnt best practice, as you are adding more than you are driving off is isnt the end of the world, you may also get a bit more Maillard Reaction but also thats not really a concern, you may also make it a bit more bitter due to that but not anything I would worry about and certainly while adding more hops will go toward balancing it... added with dry hopping not really a concern. (A short boil that is)

 

anyway thats the way I see it.

 

That said I always tried not to boil my cans.

 

Yob

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continuos whisking/stirring I think is needed if boiling the ingredients as sugars turn to caramel if they were to settle on the bottom

 

stirring till boil? Yep every so often... once it's boiling it's stirring itself, it will only start to caramelise when the viscosity is much less than the viscosity we are talking about.

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and..... just to confuse this matter.....

You can do a decoction mash which in simplified terms is, taking some of your wort from the kettle and boiling in another. Some people do this to get a form of caramelisation to add back to the main kettle [innocent]

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and..... just to confuse this matter.....

You can do a decoction mash which in simplified terms is, taking some of your wort from the kettle and boiling in another. Some people do this to get a form of caramelisation to add back to the main kettle [innocent]

 

sorry Bill, a decoction is taking some of the grains from the mash and boiling it isnt it? or are there different sorts of decoction??

 

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The range for decoction goes from thick (mostly grain and a bit of wort) to thin (mostly wort roughly grains). Variations of this method go from 1 - 3 decoctions or "rests stages". And yes it will give you a great caramel taste.

 

I've read you can reach around 10-15 ebc on your final beer color from a pale or 2 row decoction. In fact some bocks use around 98% light malt, and get the color from decoction caramel [lol]

 

Definitely wanna try it sometime.

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and..... just to confuse this matter.....

You can do a decoction mash which in simplified terms is, taking some of your wort from the kettle and boiling in another. Some people do this to get a form of caramelisation to add back to the main kettle [innocent]

 

sorry Bill, a decoction is taking some of the grains from the mash and boiling it isnt it? or are there different sorts of decoction??

Ummm yeah Yob that is correct. [whistling

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